Role (Part 4 Re: New project) Saul Epstein Wed, 24 Mar 1999 16:02:55 -0600 0272 - Objects and Cases Saul Epstein Tue, 9 Dec 1997 18:45:54 -0600 From: Rob Zook Date: Tuesday, December 9, 1997 4:09 PM > At 01:07 PM 12/9/97 -0600, Saul wrote: > > >What is amusing, and for which the professor deserves additional > >respect, is that mixed systems are entirely natural. > > Well, I know for formal mode I personally would prefer a more > exacting tense system. However, retaining some elements which would > occur in a natural language seems perfectly alright. In fact, that > fails in line with my idea that the language would get re- > constructed after the reformation, thus having characteristics of > both natural and constructed languages. Very true. That will give us, just as it gave the Vulcans, the opportunity to experiment with an idealized system (Formal Mode), while helping to ensure the language's naturalness. > >>We do have one comparitive grammer structure: equals. I tried to > >>use the "distort" and "pleasure" as descriptions to use the X Y > >>comparative order grammer. X Y means X = Y. > > > >It may be more accurate to say "X Y" means "X relates to Y," with > >the relationship depending somehow on context. Because it can also > >mean "Y of X." > > Well, the only two examples of this I saw in the Lexicon were: > > Equotional sentences are expressed by simple > juxtaposition in a certain syntactic order: X Y , > where X= old information, Y = new information. > > Thus 'Spock is tall' is literally 'Spock tall' and > 'Spock is commander' is 'Spock (X) - commander (Y). Ah, yes. I had forgotten about those. Unfortunately, they directly contradict 2) Vulcan is a dD language; ... mean[ing]..,that which determines [precedes] that which is determined. ([i,e.] Attribute-Head). Hence "Spock's partner's blood" is in Vulcan either a) Spock'at t'hyla'at plak (with two gen[i]tive suffi[x]es 'at) or b) Spoc[k] t'hyla'at plak, with a zero morph for the gen[i]tive relation because of the dD principle. from the "More on Vulcan" addendum, which implies that "spok t'haila" means friend of Spock or, as English might have said long ago "Spockfriend." The second word is the thing spoken of, while the first word identifies that thing more specifically. This would, by extension, imply that one could speak of "TallSpock" and "CommanderSpock," but that "SpockTall" would evoke Spock's height and "SpockCommander" his command style. "How tall was he?" "Oh, easily spocktall." Now, obviously the point can be made that the one structure represents a whole clause while the other is merely a compound noun. But in the context of a complex sentence, how can one possibly tell the difference? The most ready and least disruptive solution I can see is to attach the two parts of compounds to each other and treat them as one word. Only the second would be inflected, and the "facing" boundaries of the two words could exert phonological influence on each other. Thus, in most cases a compound of two words would sound different than a sequence of the same two words, allowing the audience to interpret a statement properly. > >Giving examples of cases in English is difficult because our > >inflexion is severely deteriorated. It's most obvious with > >pronouns though: > > > I think I see what you're getting at. > > >But do you see that, by not marking "cta'e," your sentence begins > >with the speaker ordering some second person's facts to find > >something, without ever saying what? > > Well, I did not at first because I thought that V+S+O meant simply > word order. "More on Vulcan" also describes Vulcan as a VOS language... > If I rearrainged what I said: va'numkaa s'at cta'e, to > cta'e s'at va'numkaa it still looks like "facts yours find", in > which the verb subject and object all still the same. Let's see... In the first clause of the quote, here are the pieces. (Subject[you]) Verb[find] Object[you-GEN facts] There is no stated subject; it is understood to be a second-person pronoun. Everything else in the clause, except the verb, is the direct object of the verb -- that which is to be found. In Standard English, the only indication of status as direct object is position somewhere after the verb. (So you can't really, for instance, say "Your facts find," because your audience is left asking "Find what?" "Facts yours find," is pretty much beyond standard interpretation: the noun in the genitive must immediately precede the possessed term, with all its adjectives and adverbs.) In Vulcan, word order doesn't convey this information. A term is a direct object if it is properly marked as standing in the accusative with the suffix -hi. Without being marked for some case or participating in a compound, an entity stands in the nominative, the case of the subject. A more lucid example might be ow'va'penum kro'elhi surak he-sought way-ACC Surak[-NOM] meaning "Surak sought [the] way." Without the case marking on "way" ow'va'penum kro'el surak he-sought way[-?] surak[-NOM] you have "Surak of the way sought," or "The way, which is Surak, sought" (depending on what gets done with that "X Y" business) without specifying what was sought. ---------- 0521 - Re: categories of indirect objects Saul Epstein Wed, 8 Jul 1998 10:05:39 -0500 Quotes from: Rob Zook Date: Friday, June 26, 1998 9:52 AM >Do you have a list of "recognized" types of objects of >verbs somewhere. I found a list of latin ones which may help or not. >Most of them seem pretty familiar, and I think it would help Vulcan >to have some pretty unfamiliar ones too - although of what kind I'm >not sure. True, as long as we resist the temptation to make too many. I may have been indirectly misrepresenting Latin around here: everything I know about Latin grammar comes from a few pages at the front of a little Latin-English dictionary I have, and I realized while looking something up the other day that these pages make no mention of instrumental or locative cases. I know those from Sanskrit, but their functions are apparently handled by other cases in Latin. Anyway, here are the cases I've been assuming operate in Vulcan, based on the ZC, along with their suffixes. nominative subject -<> accusative "direct" object - instrumental object as instrument - dative object as destination - ablative object as origin - genitive object as possessor - locative object as location - (vocative object as audience - ) and to these I'd like to add associative object as companion - I'm completely leaving out <'> for now, because I feel like we should figure out what it is and does before we decide what makes it appear and disappear. (And I put vocative in parentheses because it seems like there may be some long-standing disagreement among grammarians as to whether it constitutes a case.) Also, I know the labels of direct vs. indirect object are helpful because they're familiar to many of us -- including those who don't know what the labels mean. ;-) But unfortunately, they refer to the relationship of nouns to verbs, but the case system as a whole covers relationships between nouns as well. For instance (in the spirit of so many of our examples) "Die, killer (who is a) Terran!" "Die, killer (who kills) Terran(s)!" These are more precise than the English equivalent "Die, Terran killer!" Also, once can speak of , "the way to Shikahr," or even "She waits for us on the way to Shikahr." >In the context of what I said about catagorizing >the various kinds of objects, you mean that -ti and -sko should head, >or at least be in different catagories. Exactly. ---------- 0605 - Summary of "Syntactic Relationships" Expansion Saul Epstein Sat, 29 Aug 1998 13:44:27 -0500 My "Some Thoughts on Word Classes" and subsequent comments are meant to be read in light of ZC Chapter 2. "Some Thoughts" is speculative in that it proposes to introduce/formalize some things that were absent or unclear before. This, with any subsequent comments, is meant to summarize and clarify the full system of "Syntactic Relationships of Entity-Words" as laid out in ZC Chapter 5 (and elsewhere) with the one addition that I think has been accepted. (Or, at least, hasn't been rejected yet...) It also stands as "Let's Talk: Grammar (Part 1)," sequel to "Let's Talk: Phonetics," in which I offer a "modernized" set of names for these relationships. These relationships are, in fact, classes of relationship. The English prepositions (or other features where available) in parentheses are meant to suggest each class and represent the "default" meaning of each suffix. But, for instance, a locative entity may be that which another entity is above, below, before, behind, around, etc. -- not merely that which another entity is IN. Separate words, much like prepositions, will be available to make such precise distinctions. Possessive -at entity as possessor (of) Destinal -ha entity as destination (to) Acceptive -hi entity as "direct object" (NA) Locative -he entity as location (in) Instrumental -ti entity as instrument (by means of) Appellative -a/e entity as audience (,) Original -cha' entity as origin (from) Associative -sko entity as companion (together with) "That one (is) a friend OF Spock." "Spock's friend walks TO Shikahr." "Spock's friend reads a book." "Spock's friend walks (about) IN Shikahr." "Spock's friend speaks WITH a Universal Translator." "Where (is) your friend, Spock?" "My friend walks FROM Shikahr." "Sarek walks WITH him." ---------- 0618 - Re: Summary of "Syntactic Relationships" Expansion Saul Epstein Wed, 2 Sep 1998 23:09:56 -0500 From: Rob Zook Date: Monday, August 31, 1998 10:22 PM > At 07:54 PM 9/1/98 -0500, Saul Epstein wrote: > > From: Rob Zook > > Date: Tuesday, September 1, 1998 11:03 AM > > > > > Saul Epstein wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > "That one (is) a friend OF Spock." First, > > > Ummm..,that one's pretty metaphorical Saul, I don't think it > > > translates very well. then, > Well, the "that one" makes the whole sentance a use of a certain > figure of speech, and the particular "that" you choose to use, I > think takes that into account already. and then, > Yeah, I just mean that there should be a better way of translating > that. I'm not attached to this hypothetical Vulcan form either as a naturally occuring feature (which I intended) or as a manufactured translation for an unusual English feature (which was not what I intended). So I welcome any better Vulcan forms with equivalent translations into English. I'm afraid I don't see the metaphor you refer to either in the English or the Vulcan, but I don't think that really matters. > Maybe an initial post of all the latins one would be a good start > for an initial comparison? Sure, though I suddenly wonder how useful this will be. My Latin-English dictionary lists five "cases." I've looked them up in turn in a regular dictionary... Nominative - noun is subject "of a finite verb" Genitive --- noun is object "expressing possession, source, or a partitive concept" Dative ----- noun is "indirect object of a finite verb" Accusative - noun is "direct object of a finite verb" Ablative --- noun is object "expressing removal, deprivation, direction from, source, cause, or agency" These definitions seem drawn from descriptions of English grammar, but then grammarians of English were historically over-awed by grammarians of Latin so it may be this is how the latter understood Latin to work as well as how the former understood English to work. In practice, "indirect" objects often take cases other than the dative. In English, "direct" objects sometimes do take the dative. Clear hallmarks of natural language ;-) (I also note with grim satisfaction that "genitive" and "accusative" were originally mistranslations for Greek terms to the effect of "generic" and "causative," which explains why the Latin labels make so little sense.) ---------- End Part 4 -- from Saul Epstein locus*planetkc,com - www,planetkc,com/locus "Surakri' ow'phacur the's'hi the's'cha'; the's'pharka the's'hi surakecha'." -- K'dvarin Urswhl'at